Tui Group has followed Thomas Cook in describing Greece as being “surprisingly strong” this year, ttg media reports.
Speaking on a conference call after the firm announced its financial results, Fritz Joussen, Tui Group chief executive echoed Cook by saying that “long-haul and cruises are also growing strongly,” and added “But for summer it is still early days.”
Furthermore, he confirmed price increases for UK customers this summer, cited a group level recovery of Egypt and announced that the firm had seen 4% more customers but 8% more revenue for summer as well as winter 2017.
Joussen noted that summer bookings from the UK were up 3% on last year and revenues were 12% higher, driven by a combination of higher prices and customers spending more to travel further afar.
“Customers are spending more partly because prices have gone up,” he said, citing the depreciation of the pound.
“Is that something we can pass on? In Spain potentially not because there is scarce supply [of accommodation] and we see that with our own hotels.
“We put money into renovations and making hotels more attractive.”
He also said the group had seen a “recovery to Egypt”, although not from the UK market.
TTG reported this week that the Nordic countries had become the latest to lift their Sharm el Sheikh flights ban.
“Other than the UK our source markets are mainly targeted to other parts of the country [than Sharm],” he said.
Asked whether Tui Group anticipated any negative impact on bookings or perception as the Tunisia inquests continue in the UK, Joussen would not comment at length.
He said: “It was a very tragic incident and we are very open and contributing all that we can to the inquests.”
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RELATED TOPICS: Greece, Greek tourism news, Tourism in Greece, Greek islands, Hotels in Greece, Travel to Greece, Greek destinations , Greek travel market, Greek tourism statistics, Greek tourism report
